Practical Produce Safety

Maximizing Quality, Profitability and Safety

In February 2015 (rescheduled from December 2014), we will be offering "Writing a Practical Produce Safety Plan" workshops in locations around Vermont. The flyer (which has more details and a registration form if you prefer to mail in your info rather than complete on-line registraion) is here. Online registration is available here.

What is Practical Produce Safety?

PPS was developed in 2010 with three Vermont produce farmers. They were concerned that looming produce safety regulations and practices were designed for large farms, and would be onerous and costly for small diversified farms to implement. None of these farmers were required to have third-party food safety audits such as USDA GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices), they simply wanted to learn about produce safety practices, write a produce safety plan, and implement effective practices on their farms.

PPS was created to help farmers implement produce safety practices in a way that fits their scale and
available resources. PPS allows farmers to evaluate their farming practices through the lens of self-audit, closely based on the USDA GAPs checklist, write a produce safety plan, and then implement practices that provide cost-effective risk reduction.

The contents of this manual, beginning with the introductory "What Is Practical Produce Safety?" pages listed first, were carefully developed with a team of farmers and researchers to provide produce growers with the tools they need to get started with (or refine) their own on-farm safety practices.